


underneath the cup in a black, marker pen

by earliegrey



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, coffee shop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 21:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3356378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earliegrey/pseuds/earliegrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Espresso, double shot,” he grouses, voice deep but rough, as he searches his pockets for his wallet. Taiga rings him up, sneaking a glance at him as he receives the crisp thousand yen bill.</p><p>“Long night?” Taiga jokes as he grabs for coins in the well of the register, but the man doesn’t answer.</p><p>Up close, the salary man looks like shit, lines under his eyes and a shadow of a stubble tracing down his jaw, sunken eyes staring at the floor, he’s in a world of his own.</p><p>(Taiga a barista, and Daiki a businessman needing some caffeine.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	underneath the cup in a black, marker pen

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, Earlie here! This was supposed to be a drabble for a prompt on tumblr a while ago and it became something like a monster haha! This one will probably be different from the tumblr version since I'm...rewriting it, or touching up on it here. ^q^!! (Ahh, my ridiculous habit if editing over and over...) It's valentine's today so I thought to transfer some things from wordpress over to ao3.
> 
> Anyways, a somewhat typical Coffee AU story! Please enjoy!
> 
> Excuse any mistakes. uvu!!

He remembers when it started.

It was just another Thursday during a slow hour in the afternoon—hardly any customers come in around this time after the rush of after school kids have gone, leaving behind a trail of shredded straw wrappers and a mess for Taiga to clean up.

Except a man walks in, hair tousled by the strong winds outside, tie crooked and a hand gripping a file of loose paper.

The man swears, pins his folders and briefcase onto the nearest table, and shuffles everything back together, into a semblance of a neat stack.

The salary man looks about his age, seems to be around his height. Taiga watches him, bored, and leans against the counter. Some of his customers give the man an annoyed glance as he pulls the chair out, metal legs screeching back, and sinks into his seat, hands on his face, shoulders slumping.

He looks upset or frustrated and Taiga studies him carefully from the corner of his eye.

Few minutes pass before the man stands up, storms his way to the counter. Taiga doesn’t even bother to look away or hide the fact that he’s been staring, but he does smooth down his apron and amble to the register.

Salary man doesn’t look like he’s noticed.

“Espresso, double shot,” he grouses, voice deep but rough, as he searches his pockets for his wallet. Taiga rings him up, sneaking a glance at him as he receives the crisp thousand yen bill.

“Long night?” Taiga jokes as he grabs for coins in the well of the register, but the man doesn’t answer.

Up close, the salary man looks like shit, lines under his eyes and a shadow of a stubble tracing down his jaw, sunken eyes staring at the floor, he’s in a world of his own.

It’d make sense to see this kind of person during the ungodly hours of the morning,  _not_  the afternoon. But people are people; they’re strange. This man very much so.

“Aomine,” he mumbles when Taiga hands him back his change. “To go.” He yawns and then adds as an after thought, scratching the back of his neck. “—please.”

He returns to his seat, back to his files, and makes a mess of some of the papers he has, tiredly peering at them with drooping eyes. Taiga peers at him over the top of the espresso machine as he pulls a small paper cup from the stacks with a marker in hand.

 _Aomine_ , he writes neatly on the side and looks up at him again—the man has his head buried in his arms, elbows holding his papers down; unmoving, looks tired—and then Taiga turns the cup upside down, and writes again.

—

He says Aomine’s name twice.

It has a nice feel on his tongue and says it once more, needlessly, because the first two times had jarred the man from his quick slumber.

Aomine clambers up to the counter, rubbing sleep from his eyes and grabs the cup with a grunt of thanks, sniffs at it, and with a slight nod, he briskly turns around and walks away without seeing the ham and cheese croissant Taiga had decided to wrap up for him and had placed next to the paper cup.

—

_hope you have a better day, gave you extra_

—

The second time he comes in is Sunday, and he’s considerably dressed down from the last time Taiga saw him, dark shirt and jeans with some tears along the seams.

Taiga recognizes him right away though, because his whirl of blue hair is still a mess, and come on, it’s not every day that a man of 190-some centimeters would walk into his coffee shop.

Aomine looks better, like a man who had a full eight hours of sleep and some extra to lounge around into the late morning.

This time when he saunters up to the counter, he smells thickly of cigarette smoke, and Taiga’s sure of it when he sees him pulling out a lighter with his wallet.

“Espresso, double shot again?” Taiga asks, doing his best not to gag at the smell, to keep a straight face as the smell permeates the air. He taps at the buttons on the register, readies himself to ring it up.

Aomine gives him an odd look before he nods slowly. “…yeah?” Taiga takes his thousand yen bill, punches in buttons, returns a couple of coins, prints out the receipt.

“Your name?” Taiga asks out of habit, as he plucks a cup from the stack and already begins writing  _Aomine_  on the side.

“Aomine,” he answers without missing a beat and drops something that sounds like a hundred yen coin into the tip jar. It clatters just as Taiga turns around and flips the cup over and presses his marker down.

—

_you smell god awful, but at least you look better, gave you extra_

—

Taiga doesn’t make it a hobby to get to know his customers—at most he can recognize faces, vaguely remember names—but this guy is an exception but only since he’s a curiosity.

People come to his shop for many reasons, some like to drop by for a cheap cup of coffee and park themselves in the corner with a good book, others come here for light snacks or meals of sweet bread rolls and buttery croissants, and then there are the very rare few who come in looking like a wreck, asking for the strongest thing he can offer before they bolt out of there once they get it.

Usually Taiga doesn’t care, doesn’t bother, they’re customers anyways and he’s running a business. But this particular man is interesting, coming in like death warmed over on some days and then reeking of smoke and a bit of alcohol on another day.

Sometimes he’d drink his cup of coffee in his seat, then come back to the counter to drop a coin, and other times he’d just hesitate a bit to the side, scribble on  _something_ , and then come back to the counter to grab an extra napkin and tip a coin.

But the most curious thing that pisses him off the most is that the croissant sandwich or salmon bagel that Taiga has bagged out of the good nature in his heart and stacked right next to the paper cup goes  _completely_  ignored despite his efforts to make it  _as obvious as possible._

Aomine always walks out without so much of a glance behind.

—

_the sandwich I put near the cup is for you actually, just take it_

—

After watching him come in a few more times during the next week, Taiga learns this about Aomine: he’s a man at the office, probably working a 9-5 job, and the only business that’s close enough for salary men like him to walk in and out is from the building right across his cafe.

He has a lunch break around 11:30, trudges in for another espresso (and ignored sandwich,) before leaving to resume work at 1.

Sundays are his day off since he comes wearing more than casual clothes; once and twice, he walked into the cafe with a basketball in a small net hanging from his duffle bag.

(“You play ball?” Taiga had asked, attempting to make conversation, however short it was, in the span of exchanging bills and coins to writing his name on the cup.

“Yeah, just whenever,” Aomine answers, short and simple and whatever potential there was for a light chat quickly dies off when he retreats to the seat near the window, content on sitting down and staring out into the busy streets and roaming people.)

They weren’t that much different in age, Taiga had noticed when Aomine was digging through his wallet and read his ID, their birthdays being in the same month kind of deal, only that Taiga’s was at the beginning of August, and his was at the end.

(When he tells his brother all this one night over a pint of beer, Tatsuya shakes his head and sighs. _I hope you don’t get in some kind of legal trouble for stalking a customer—_

 _I’m not stalking,_ Taiga vehemently denies and takes a long drink of the tasteless booze.  _I’m just curious._ )

—

_we should play street ball sometime, and stop leaving the sandwich_

—

Probably the thirtieth time Aomine comes in, Taiga knows exactly how it’s going to go down—espresso, double shot, to go, the name’s Aomine, crisp thousand yen bill, one hundred yen coin into tips, wrap the cup in two layers of paper napkin, and leave the croissants behind.

It’s enough to make Taiga go mad, so he takes the abandoned sandwich and tosses it to the side for a later lunch of his own.

—

~~_my name’s Kagami_ ~~

—

“Have you actually considered the possibility that maybe he just doesn’t  _look_  underneath the paper cup?” Tatsuya asks one day when Taiga makes his routine calls to complain about his most irritating customer he would have had that week—Aomine being at the top of his list.

Taiga opens his mouth to argue and then clams up. “Well—”

“Why don’t you just  _hand_  him the sandwich and talk to him like a normal person, you big baby.”

“But—”

Tatsuya hangs up and Taiga is left staring at the wall wondering what to do.

—

~~_we should play ball someti_ ~~

—

He should just give him the sandwich, throw the thing at Aomine’s face and tell him to take it, Taiga thinks and he spends the quiet time in the after-lunch rush to gather strength and courage he’d need to  _speak up._

He doesn’t like to think he’s a chicken, but he can’t bring himself to talk, mouth drying up whenever Aomine turns to leave, paper cup in hand but without the bag.

Two weeks pass like this, and Taiga stops writing messages.

Nothing happens

—

Then comes Thursday, Aomine is here again, the only one pushing through the doors and into the shop on a lazy afternoon. (Just like the afternoon when Taiga first saw him.)

Espresso again, crisp thousand yen bill again, Taiga doesn’t even have to think and he presses the buttons he’s come to memorize and returns the same amount of coins like he always had.

“Your name?” He asks again, marker already making the curves of the hiragana み, but the extended silence startles him mid-way, makes him look up, questioning.

“Do you ever clear your tip jar?”

Taiga blinks and then stares at him; Aomine looks confused, eyebrows dipped and only then does Taiga realize how  _blue_  his eyes can be. “Say again?”

“No, nothing,” he says with a defeated shrug and retreats to that corner as he waits for his coffee.

—

Today’s special is a ham and cheese croissant, and today Taiga thinks he might as well try one more time.

Taiga sets down the coffee carefully, closing the plastic lid and bunching some napkins to the side. He neatly packages the sandwich and has the mouth of the bag crumpled under his fists.

Taiga gives it a few seconds before he looks up to call his name, only to find that Aomine is already making his way to the counter in careful, graceful strides, and Taiga’s nerves give out—it’s so fucking stupid,  _really_ —and he drops the sandwich away to the side.

It’ll be forgotten, like always; and he’ll have to eat it later, like always—

“Thanks,” Aomine says stiffly after sticking a coin into the tip jar and reaching for his cup of coffee. There’s a moment hesitation, like he’s thinking hard, but then he sighs loudly.

There’s a loud crinkle as Aomine swipes the croissant off the counter and hurriedly bolts from the cafe.

Taiga only watches him disappear behind people crowding around the crosswalk.

—

Taiga closes at 9:30, sweeps the floor with a broom and gathers up strewn napkins and trash into a pile he’ll toss away into the trash.

He takes a curious glance at the tip jar Aomine had mentioned earlier, it’s sitting in front of the register right next to a small display of tin boxes of mint. Taiga hardly paid attention to the jar, he never empties it, having found no real need to because most people don’t throw anything in there.

Taiga blinks and walks closer, seeing a a pile of hundred yen coins and even weirder still, a bunch of neatly folded squares. Leaning the broom against the wall, he unscrews the lid and empties everything onto the surface of the counter, picking aside the small squares.

They’re receipts with various dates on them, but the price number is the same for the same coffee: espresso, double shot.

And in god ugly handwriting, Taiga can make out hastily scribbled kana:

_Thanks, I needed that_

_Thanks, and excuse you, I shower ok_

_Thanks but I just had lunch, I’m not hungry_

_I already ate lunch at the cafeteria; you really dont need to_

_We should, ~~lets have dinner~~ What’s your number?_

_I know that, stupid, you have a name tag. ~~what’s your~~ Can I have your number?_

_Aomine Daiki, my personal cell: 03-6481-9902 ~~call me~~_

Taiga smashes his head into the nearby counter.

How  _stupid_  can he be?

—

He’s been staring at his phone for the last weeks actually, always wondering when exactly an unknown number would appear on his cellphone and he’d hear more words spoken to him than just: _“Your name?”_ and  _“That’ll be 430 yen.”_

The call never came though and it’s taken him a while to figure it out—the  _idiot_  never looked in his tip jar regardless of Daiki’s efforts of throwing a coin in every single time.

He usually doesn’t leave tips, or even ask for the number of baristas of a small cafe, but Daiki had found a scribble on the bottom of his cup accidentally, on that one Thursday afternoon at the office.

That week hadn’t been the best.

He lost his documents the day before Thursday, wiped clean from his computer hard drive and what he had left was scattered throughout his files, but even his papers held outdated information and he’d have to source work from his colleagues to restore what he originally had.

Already having pulled an all-nighter, Daiki had aimlessly headed down in search for coffee, found the cafe nestled between two larger buildings, scrambled in, scrambled out, and drank everything in one sitting when it had cooled down enough.

As he rolled up his sleeves and tossed his tie to the side, he knocked the cup aside and onto the floor, only glancing down at it a few hours later, when it the afternoon had turned into evening, and saw:

_hope you have a better day, gave you extra_

It was quite the ugly handwriting, but he does remember the tall barista behind the counter, the dusky, red hair drawn back messily with bobby pins, revealing very impressive and ferocious eyebrows.

So Daiki visited again just to say thank you, but decided writing it down was easier than bothering him to say it. He wrote it on a piece of scrap paper, dropped it in with a coin, returned to the office to finish his coffee, only to find another scribble, and another scribble.

It happens for another few weeks or a month even, and then—none after that.

—

His phone rings, quarter to ten that Thursday when he finally mentioned the jar and Daiki bolts upright from his seat and nearly knocks aside his papers as he scrambles to find his phone, heart thudding in his chest as he fumbles with it, palms sweaty and  _fuck_ —why is he even nervous?

 _Unknown number,_  that has got to be him, and Daiki swallows the spit in his mouth. He swipes the answer button—play it cool, act casual, pretend it’s a business call, he’s done plenty of that—

“…h-hello, this is Aomine.”

 _Fuck,_ he stuttered.

There’s a silence before there’s a voice clearing on the other side, equally hesitant, “Uh. This is. Kagami…the guy at the coffee shop.”  _I know_ _,_  Daiki wants to say but realizes he’s shaking, so he jitters his leg to keep it from rising to his voice.

“That…took you long enough,” he says with a bit of a teasing jibe and breathing a small sigh of relief when Kagami  _laughs_ at that; it’s a deep sound, gentle and amiable.

“Sorry, I don’t check that thing you know?”

Daiki laughs to match his tone, a fond smile making his way to his lips. “I probably spent thirty thousand on you in coins.”

“Well, do you want it back?” There’s a slight pause here as Daiki blinks. “—um, I mean, if you didn’t eat yet—I could, you know. We can—”

“I know a place, couple blocks from here,” Daiki interrupts and he stands up, instantly regretting it when all his books tumble to the floor.

He hears Kagami laugh as Daiki mumbles a quick apology under his breath, as he shovels everything back into some semblance of organization onto the corner of his desk before nabbing his wallet and walking to the elevators in the hall. “It’s Italian, pretty good. I think.”

“Sounds great.” Daiki hears as the elevator door dings opens and he dashes right in, jamming the first floor button madly with his thumb. “What the heck was that earlier by the way?”

“I knocked my stuff over, it’s been busy for the last few weeks.” He stares at his reflection in the mirrors of the elevator walls and frowns at how wrinkled his dress shirt had become, at the slight coffee stain on his collar, and his bedhead.

Daiki gives up after trying to pat down the spike of hair, because Kagami had seen him worse, much worse, and said nothing about it besides the fact that he stinks. (Probably referring to the cigarette he’s been chain-smoking because of stress.)

The elevator hits ground floor and he taps his foot, impatient for the doors to open, and bursts out when it finally opens. “Are you at the cafe?”

“Actually, I’m at the lobby, not sure if it’s the right buil—” Daiki hears it over the phone before he hears it in person, from the barista that is standing front of him, in a black shirt and dark, blue jeans and missing the cafe’s signature burgundy apron. “Oh.”

Daiki stutters to a halt a few steps away from him, before he runs his fingers through his hair, suddenly self-conscious again. “Er, hi.”

Kagami nods slowly, looking at him once before staring at the floor. Daiki can see his shoulders stiffen before he looks up again, forcing a grin as he holds out his hand.

“Kagami Taiga,” he says like he’s been rehearsing it. “Nice to finally meet you…sorry, I didn’t check the tip jar sooner.”

“Aomine Daiki,” he replies, breathing a bit easier and Kagami’s grin grows softer and more genuine when Daiki laughs, sheepish and reaches out to grasp his hand.

It’s warm, a tad bit sweaty, but Daiki grips it a bit firmer for that. “Thanks for the sandwich.”

**Author's Note:**

> Ahaha, just some cute story about dorks. ^q^!!! Hope you enjoyed~!! Have a great Valentine's!


End file.
